Odd News

Couple saw home in half

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-09 14:25

A married couple in Cambodia who had "finally had enough" of each other have gone their separate ways by literally cutting their home in half.

The husband sawed off his half of the house following the split. [Agencies]

The wife will stay put with the upright half while her husband has carried away his half to start again on the other side of the village.

Neighbours said the couple saw the radical action as the most cost-efficient and equitable way to avoid each other in a country where divorce lawyers can be expensive.

Vorng Morn, the headman of Cheach village, fifty miles from the capital Phnom Penh, told the Phnom Penh Post: "We tried to persuade them to think clearly before they did this because they had been married for nearly 40 years. But they did not listen."

Mr Morn refused to identify the couple to protect their privacy.

The impetus for the break up was the husband's alleged malingering, or the wife's alleged lack of care, depending on your point of view.

"His wife said that if her husband got sick and stayed at home, she was made to pay for his medicine, but if he stayed at his parent's house, she wouldn't have to pay. So they separated," said Mr Morn.

Following the spat, the husband's friends helped him move his wife's belongings to one side of the property, before chiselling and sawing half of the building off, in a drastic move that even Steptoe and Son did not quite manage.

Until he reconstructs his half of the marital home the husband will live with his mother and father.